Embodiments described herein relate generally to switch fabrics and more particularly to access switches configured to send data to and receive data from switch fabrics.
Switch fabrics can be, for example, used to route data between multiple devices, such as access switches. Each access switch can be operatively coupled to the switch fabric and can control data input to and output from the switch fabric. In this manner, each access switch can send data to the switch fabric and receive data from the switch fabric.
The switch fabric is often disposed within a housing different from the housing of the access switches. In such a situation, a cable is typically used to physically and operatively couple each access switch to the switch fabric. In large applications having a large number of access switches, the number of cables between access switches and a switch fabric can become large and potentially unmanageable.
Moreover, in some applications each access switch can be coupled to more than a single switch fabric for redundancy and/or to increase the capacity of the switch fabric. In such an application, a separate cable can be used for each connection between an access switch and each switch fabric to which that access switch is coupled. For example, if two switch fabrics are used, the number of cables between the access switches and the switch fabrics doubles. Additionally, the number of access switches that can be coupled to a switch fabric can be limited by the number of ports of the switch fabric.
Thus, a need exists for an apparatus and method for expanding the number of access switches that can be connected to a switch fabric without increasing the number of physical connections to the switch fabric. Further, a need exists for an apparatus and method of decreasing the number of cables between access switches and a switch fabric.